Hello friends,
Today’s bundle is a mishmash of all of our favorite ideas.
I should also say that I (Natalie) am not the only one working on compiling these bundles each day. Melissa, Lauren B. and Sam have also been working extremely hard to put these together and each activity came from a different person today!
HOUSEHOLD ITEMS REIMAGINED!
(Idea from Lauren)
Things you can find around the house to offer your infant or toddler to play with to help with more cognitive stimulation and fight off boredom!
Use any of these items with your homemade playdough, in water, or use them as instruments/noisemakers or building blocks.
Use a variety of these items to build a structure (a favorite of the Blue Preschool). This challenges perspective and imagination of what can be a building material. This also encourages fine motor development – it’s tricky to balance different materials together! This can be done collaboratively or independently and all age groups can participate at their own level.
Hint: the infants and toddlers love making towers and tunnels for toys to go in and out of.
Create a band with your household item instruments! Explore loud and quieter and volume control. Tape small items (paper clips, beads, legos, etc) into containers to make your own shakers, which is a favorite of the Young Toddler classroom.
GUIDED MEDITATION FOR CHILDREN
(Idea by Melissa)
Times this might be helpful:
-Before rest/during rest
-Before bedtime
-After doing a high energy activity
-Before breakfast (first thing in the morning)
-To help calm down from having big feelings
Guided Meditations are appropriate for all ages and developmental levels of children.
MAKE YOUR OWN MINI BOOK
(Idea from Sam)
The first step is to make your own mini book by following the YouTube tutorial. This works best with legal size printer paper but who even has that at home, so regular sized computer paper will work just fine.
How to make your own 8-fold mini book:
Now that you have your book, Sam has thought of some great prompts to get you writing!
Parents, what we do at school is have the kids tell their stories verbally and then we transcribe the words for them. In order to respect the children’s personal voice, we transcribe it verbatim, even if it might not be grammatically correct. When you read it back to them, they will be thrilled to hear their own voice in their stories!
–Tell a story about school
“What is your favorite toy to play with at school?” “Tell about a time when you went on an outing with your class.” “What’s the silliest thing that ever happened at school?” “What is your favorite lunch that Erinn makes you?”
Tip: This is a great time to talk about fiction versus non-fiction if you want. “Did this really happen at school or is it fiction?”
-Make an i-Spy book
Draw all the things you know how to draw and then see if your families can find the star, the flower, the letter A, etc.
-Story in the Round
Take turns writing what happens next in the story. Each person writes a page or a sentence or maybe even just one word at a time!
-Act out your stories
After you have some stellar stories written, you can get the whole family together to try and act them out. Someone can be the “narrator” and read the words while everyone else tries to act out the action bits of the story. This can get pretty silly and chaotic at school so just try to have fun with it.
READ ALOUDS FROM KATE MESSNER
(Idea from Natalie Stroud)
Here are a series of read alouds from amazing children’s author, Kate Messner.
She even does a special reading of one of her unreleased books, Over and Under the Rainforest, which doesn’t come out until August. It doesn’t get much better than a BRAND, NEW book!
Have a great day trying out all of these activities!